I’ve got Godspell’s “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord” and The Beatles’ “Revolution” songs in my head after reading this week’s lectionary passage. “Prepare the way,” and “get ready for a revolution” are at the heart of John the Baptist’s message. John the Bapist was an eccentric man who has made a mark on our culture and has been the voice crying out in the wilderness, proclaiming that a revolution is at hand. John the Baptist gets highlighted every year in our lectionary, always in the second week of Advent. After the “watching and waiting” of the first week of Advent, we’re a bit rattled and shaken by this crazy man wearing camels hair and eating locusts and calling the religious authorities a “brood of vipers.” It’s jarring. It wakes us up. It calls us to action, even in these quiet waiting days of Advent contemplation. John was a revolutionary. He believed the end of Caesar’s reign was coming, the end of the world as they knew it was nigh, and he wasn’t afraid to be a little eccentric, a little odd, a little strange in order to get his point across. His message: “prepare the way of the Lord, the messiah is coming, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” It was a dangerous and rousing message, one that called the Jewish people back to their Israelite roots, one that reminded them that God is the ruler of their lives, not Caesar.
John wanted to prepare his people for the revolution that was at hand. He has one foot in the past and one foot in the future. He’s dressing like Elijah, recalling verses from Isaiah, all while he’s preparing his people for what is to come. It’s enough to jolt us out of our winter stupors and get us to slap a political bumper sticker on the back of our cars.
But mostly I just want to stay in bed. The days are grey and dreary. The nights are long. The sun sets at 4:30 in the afternoon. We’re nearing the longest night of the year, and I feel a cold coming on. While everyone else is shopping Amazon and putting tinsel on their trees, I’m resisting my need to hibernate.
This makes me feel even more tired and lazy. I should get out of bed earlier. I should get outside. I should be more positive and hopeful. It’s Advent after all.
I just went to the doctor’s for a yearly check up and came home with a lot more “shoulds.” I should drink more water. I should exercise every day. I should eat more vegetables and fewer carbs. I should lose some weight. Add on to all those “shoulds” the “shoulds” that I have roaming around in my brain on any given day, just for the fun of it: I should clean the bathroom every week. I should get rid of my clutter. I should play more with my kids and stop being so self-deprecating and come up with some brilliant plan to grow our church and solve world hunger and the climate crisis.
I do a lot of “shoulding” on myself. And a lot of catastrophizing. I tend to think the worst thing will always be the true thing. “I’m a failure,” I think. “No one likes me. I’m fat and lazy and broken and dumb”. And I think in extremes: I’ll never live up to expectations. I will always be sad in the wintertime. We’ll always have financial struggles and we’ll never get to go on a real vacation.
All these “shoulds” and catastrophes and “nevers” and “always” are deep ruts in our thinking, deep trenches that keep us from exploring new worlds and new ideas. Like that Berenstain Bear’s story, where Sister has this bad habit of chewing her nails, and she wants so badly to stop, but she doesn’t know how to do it. So Momma, the ever wise one, takes her out so they can plant some tulip bulbs together. As she maneuvers her wheelbarrow full of bulbs and dirt over the path, she explains to sister that a bad habit is just like a wheel barrow driving over the same road over and over again until there’s a deep rut. The wheelbarrow just automatically finds its way into that ditch, worn through by the repetition and the passing of time. Just like Sister’s bad habit, our way of thinking becomes a habit like a wheelbarrow going over the same ground again and again, until you’re deep in a ditch you can’t get out of. At least, not by yourself.
So it’s especially jarring for me to hear the words “repent! For the kingdom of God is at hand,” this week, because I immediately think of those guys standing on milk crates and wearing sandwich boards on the sidewalks shouting that the end of the world is coming and that we’re all doomed for hell unless we are sorrowful for all of the horrible things we’ve done and for all of the horrible human beings we are. And there I am again, back in my thought ditch, ready to add on more “shoulds” and “nevers” and “always.” I should feel bad about what I am and what I’ve done. I’ll never be rid of all this guilt. I’ll always fail to be deserving of God’s love. And on and on it goes, and suddenly I’m back in bed, drawing up the covers, hiding from the world and all that darkness.
But I want to challenge us, to challenge myself, to think about this repentance stuff differently. “Repent” in Greek is “metanoia” - literally to turn around. It means to change your mind about something, to turn and change how you think. Crazy John the Baptist has come to get us to think differently — about everything. Think differently about our world. About our lives. About each other. Metanoia means to snap out of it. To get out of the rut.
Metanoia means we should stop “shoulding” on ourselves. Repentance is different from all the “shoulds” that run through our minds. Repentance is freedom from the black and white thinking that includes the “nevers” and the “always.” This isn’t a “turn or burn” mentality, one that says we’d better shape up or else.
This isn’t a threat of hell and eternal damnation; rather metanoia is a turning back to look at all the ways we’re stuck in a rut, and then asking God to get us out of it. What if these grey days, when all I want to do is hide under the covers, are opportunities for repentance - a turning back to God who refreshes and renews us and burns away all that negative thinking, burns away all our judgments and idols and broken record thinking that spins us and spins us but gets us nowhere?
This is scary stuff, because this means we might have to enter in to the wilderness of our minds. We might even have to enter in to the wilderness of our worlds — those messy places where boundaries are compromised and things looks a little strange and we’ve got to bushwhack through the weeds to make our way through. Maybe we’ll start eating with the homeless. Maybe we’ll rethink some political ideal. Maybe we’ll recycle a little more or listen a little harder or be more present with the woman at the cash register. Maybe we’ll slow down and rethink our priorities and maybe we will drink more water or eat more vegetables or go for that neighborhood walk. Maybe we’ll do things that don’t make much sense, like eat dessert first or pay a little too much for dinner or donate a little too much for a cause. We’ll speak up for those who have no voice. We’ll start to see the world with new eyes. When we change our thinking, when we finally get out of those ruts, we might look a little weird. Like John the Baptist, we’ll start hanging out with the marginalized and the morally questionable. We’ll start making the people in power a little mad. Suddenly, we’ll stop caring about all those judgments people have of us. Suddenly, we’ll throw practicality out the window. Suddenly, logic doesn’t seem so important, and the world will no longer be seen as a business of wins and losses, gains and expenditures. And Maybe we’ll even be seen as a little harsh, as not “nice” because we were brave enough to live into the truth of who we are.
The good news is that we don’t have to repent alone. We get to do it in community, where we’re loved and supported through our transitions, from our “shoulds” and “always” and “nevers”, to new possibilities like “maybes” and “could be’s”, “wait and sees” and “I wonders.” When we get to these new possibilities, the world looks different, it looks new, it’s a revolution. We can be crazy John the Baptists who go around proclaiming that God’s reign is near, that new things are on the horizon, that there’s potential and possibility and opportunity right around the corner. We can call others to metanoia, to turn and see.
As we wait for the coming of the Christ child, let’s get ready. Let’s get prepared. Not with a bunch of “shoulds,” but with possibilities. Not with “nevers” and “always” but with “maybes” and “I wonders.” This is the story of Jesus, the baby conceived in questionable circumstances, born in a humble barn, child of two working class kids who find themselves refugees escaping death from a malicious king. The nativity story is full of possibility and hope amidst chaos and poverty. And John the Baptist calls us to prepare ourselves for such an unlikely king. Get ready for the one who will turn our world upside down, who will surprise and frustrate, who will judge and cleanse and redeem. Get ready for the maybes and I wonders and could bes. Get ready for the revolution.
I think I saw John the Baptist just the other day. She was sitting at a bus stop massaging her bare feet. Her hair was disheveled. Her shoulders hunched. She sat next to a shopping cart full of all of her worldly possessions. Still, she was singing “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” as if she were a concert soprano. She didn’t seem ashamed or embarrassed. She wasn’t full of “shoulds” or “nevers” or “always.” She was proud of her voice, of her contribution to the world. It was a contribution that said “maybe,” and “could be,” “wait and see” and “I wonder.” Her presence simply said, “the Kingdom of God is at hand,” “prepare the way of the Lord,” “a revolution is coming,” “Turn around. And see.”
Thanks be to God.
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